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Full catalog/GMGSI
GMGSI·dataset

Whole-Earth mosaic of weather-satellite imagery (NOAA)

NOAA Global Mosaic of Geostationary Satellite Imagery (GMGSI)
atmosphere NOAA NOAA active
In plain English

What it measures. A seamless global picture of the planet built from several geostationary satellites, offering visible, infrared, and water-vapor views. The visible imagery shows cloud, ice, and snow cover, while the infrared and water-vapor channels reveal more about clouds and moisture.

How it's made. NOAA stitches together imagery from its own GOES-East and GOES-West satellites plus Europe's Meteosat and Japan's Himawari-9 into one continuous global mosaic.

How & where you'd use it. Gives a single big-picture view of global cloud patterns for weather monitoring, forecasting, and climate work.

What's measured

aws-pdsagricultureclimatemeteorologicalweather

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span— → ongoing

What you can do with it

  • Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
  • Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
  • Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description

NOAA/NESDIS Global Mosaic of Geostationary Satellite Imagery (GMGSI) visible (VIS), shortwave infrared (SIR), longwave infrared (LIR) imagery, and water vapor imagery (WV) are composited from data from several geostationary satellites orbiting the globe, including the GOES-East and GOES-West Satellites operated by U.S. NOAA/NESDIS, the Meteosat-10 and Meteosat-9 satellites from theMeteosat Second Generation (MSG) series of satellites operated by European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), and the Himawari-9 satellite operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). GOES-East is positioned at 75 deg W longitude over the equator. GOES-West is located at 137.2 deg W longitude over the equator. Both satellites cover an area from the eastern Atlantic Ocean to the central Pacific Ocean region. The Meteosat-10 satellite is located at 0 deg E longitude to cover Europe and Africa regions. The Meteosat-9 satellite is located at 45.5 deg E longitude to cover the Indian Ocean region. The Himawari-9 satellite is located at 140.7 deg E longitude to cover the Asia-Oceania region. The visible imagery indicates cloud cover and ice and snow cover. The shortwave, or mid-infrared, indicates cloud cover and fog at night. The longwave, or thermal infrared, depicts cloud cover and land/sea temperature patterns. The water vapor imagery indicates the amount of water vapor contained in the mid to upper levels of the troposphere, with the darker grays indicating drier air and the brighter grays/whites indicating more saturated air. GMGSI composite images have

Get the data

noaa_access.py
# NOAA Open Data on AWS — public S3, no login
import s3fs

fs = s3fs.S3FileSystem(anon=True)
# find this dataset's bucket in the docs link in the sidebar, then:
# files = fs.ls("noaa-<bucket>/...")
# open NetCDF/GRIB with xarray, COGs with rioxarray
NOAA Open Data is on public AWS S3 — no login at all (anonymous access).